Galway Fianna Fáil councillor Noel Thomas has announced he has resigned from the party, saying that the main political parties, including Fianna Fáil, have become “detached from the ordinary person.”
Cllr Thomas, who said he will contest the upcoming local elections as an independent candidate, said on Monday’s RTÉ News at One that he faced disciplinary action from the party over his criticism of plans for asylum seeker accommodation.
Cllr Thomas had spoken out about plans to house asylum seekers at the Ross Lake Hotel in Rosscahill, Co Galway, which was later the subject of a criminal damage investigation following a fire there before Christmas. He described as “senseless” government policies around immigration.
The Connemara South councillor made headlines after telling Galway Bay FM in December that accommodating refugees was “not the responsibility” of the Galway village. Asked whether he regretted the comments as he announced his resignation, Mr Thomas said he did not, and was representing the views of his constituents.
Mr Thomas also told Virgin Media News in December: “There’s no regulation in relation to how people are being brought into the country, and unfortunately people are just fed up with it. They’ve had enough, and now they’re starting to come out and show that.
“People are coming out now in numbers to stand strong and barricade places off like this and you’re going to see an awful lot more of that,” he said.
The now former Fianna Fáil councillor told the media that protests were attended by locals who condemned the fire at the hotel.
“You’ve got to understand the strong links that hotel has got with the community there and everybody there were completely disheartened and gutted when they heard it had burnt down,” he said in December.
“They’re disgusted with what happened to that hotel and nobody, nobody condones what happened there,” he said.
The local councillor also said people “have to start realising that the inn is full” when it comes to the intake of asylum seekers.
“Like, I don’t know where they’re going to go because I don’t think there was any place suitable for them to go in the first place. Why were they brought in here with the false hope that they were going to be accommodated?” he said.
Speaking on Galway Bay FM today, Cllr Thomas said he was confident in his decision.
“One thing I am very confident about is the decision I am making. Only late yesterday evening, I was talking to another Fianna Fail Councillor who will be making an announcement very soon as well in relation to leaving the party.
“VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE FULLY BEHIND’ ME
“His concern was whether he was going to lose votes or whatever in relation to this. I couldn’t tell him from his own perspective what his career in the future was going to look like, but from my own perspective, all I know is the absolute vast majority of people are fully behind what I’m doing today.”
Speaking to RTÉ News at One on Monday, Mr Thomas said issues surrounding the disciplinary action he faced over his criticism of the government’s policy on housing asylum seekers at Oughterard last year was “partly” responsible for his decision. He went on to claim that Fianna Fáil along with the other main parties are “very detached” from the ordinary person.
“As far as I’m concerned I think the main political parties Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Sinn Féin included and the Green Party seem to have become very detached from the ordinary person as far as I’m concerned and I suppose that’s been eating away at me for some time,” Mr Thomas said.
“I suppose I was holding on all the time in the hope that some members of the Dáil would actually kick back against the leadership that was there and maybe try and get things to change but anyway, that never happened.”
Asked whether he regretted saying that “the inn is full” around immigration, he responded: “Not at all.”
“People had come to me and told me that they were afraid in relation to what was happening there, and nobody can tell me that my constituents are not entitled to give their opinions or give their concerns. My job as an elected representative is to represent those people, and that’s what I was doing with that case,” he told RTE.
Mr Thomas went on to slam “reckless, open border policies.”
“When it came to this quote, the famous quote about the inn being full, that was just completely taken out of context as being some kind or racist remark or whatever. But in actual fact, what we had done, we had filled all the accommodation in our country by reckless, open border policies.
“And they’ll keep telling us we haven’t had open border policies, but we had. We put out an invite to people to come here because the social welfare payments were very high,” Mr Thomas said.
“What we have done by the measures we took when the Ukrainian war started is that we have filled all our accommodation […] with people who mostly were not fleeing war, to be very honest about it.”
“We have left ourselves in a position now where the genuine people who need our help, – and there’s lots of genuine people who still need our help from Ukraine – we have no place to put them.”
“The reason that we have no accommodation for people who need accommodation in this country is because of our disastrous manner in which we dealt with this situation from day one. We have flooded all the accommodation that we have with people who may not be requiring that accommodation, to be very honest about it.”
Asked whether his comments were “feeding fear,” Mr Thomas denied this, adding: “There’s no point pretending that this isn’t happening.”
He is the second party councillor from the Connemara area to resign in recent weeks. His resignation follows that of Cllr Seamus Walsh, also of Fianna Fáil, who placed the blame for the fire at the Ross Lake Hotel on the “senseless policy of the government.”
Clrr Walsh resigned from the party just months after speaking out about the incident, saying:
“We have to stand back and look at it, and if it was a criminal act, what made that criminal act happen, and it’s this senseless policy of the Government.”
“People are living in fear, and if it was done maliciously, it is absolutely the fear for the safety and wellbeing of their families that drove people to this,” he added.
He told Galway Bay FM just before Christmas:
“We are good to the people that are here, but we cannot be scapegoated. We cannot be used as a holding tank. It’s just not right what’s being done to us.”
He also said the former hotel was not a suitable location for IPAS applicants, and that the amenities and services were not sufficient.
“The people aren’t able to take it, the people cannot cope with it, the people don’t want it,” he told the local radio station.
Announcing his resignation last week, Cllr Walsh, who had served with the party since the 2009 local elections, said he was keen to stress that he will be running in the upcoming elections – and is strongly considering a move to Independent Ireland.